Over the years, Cisco’s partner logos have gone through a number of iterations…
Some of you may remember the old-school Cisco logo with the white bridge on a teal background.
Who could forget the updated Cisco logo with a white backdrop?
But the latest partner logo update brings a modern, streamlined look and feel and is in line with the Cisco brand. These new partner logos help partners more effectively represent, leverage, and extend the Cisco brand to their customers.
Cisco is also actively promoting these logos to end customers to raise awareness of and differentiation for partners and your unique capabilities. Customers will quickly identify these logos with a partner’s given expertise, helping them find the right partner to help them build the right solution. Start using your new partner logo to promote your expertise today.
But back to the contest and how you can win. Simply share your updated or new marketing assets featuring your new Cisco partner logo, and be entered into a drawing to win US$2000 in Joint Marketing Funds. Five winners will be selected in August 2012. All you need to do is show us your partner logo.
As Chief Strategist of the Worldwide Partner Organization, I often speak with partners about their value-add, differentiation, and profitability. Here are some thoughts on how the traditional partner differentiation model needs to evolve in the cloud market place.
Partner profitability has always been driven by the unique value that partners add to surround the offerings from their suppliers. This can be in the form of integration with other third-party products, their own pre- and post-sales services, or even custom service level agreements. The more unique this differentiation, the higher is the partner margin on the transaction; and the more relevant their proposed solution is for the customer, the higher is their probability of winning the order. It is not surprising to see two Cisco partners – one making 12% gross margin and the other making over 25% on similar transactions due to their differing value propositions. Both business models are valid as long as the partner is managing the overhead against the subject margin they are receiving.
Over the past decade, channel partners have typically created unique value propositions around the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) they have been reselling to end customers. This proposition may include having the lowest price, providing fast delivery, conducting pre-delivery testing or configuration, on-site installation or integration, and many others. These CPE related on-premise value propositions are still relevant in the cloud builder role, but are often not applicable to a cloud services reselling role.
It is clear that the market is moving rapidly to cloud adoption based on new consumption models. According to UBM (United Business Media), 37% of all IT spend will be off-premise in 2013 and there will also be an 11% decline in CPE sales next year. Channel partners need to create new value propositions to differentiate themselves when they resell new cloud services instead of CPE to their customers. In some ways, this requires a return to basics: Read More »
A phone system that doesn’t work means business lost. After all, if you can’t interact with customers and staff, productivity goes down while frustration goes up.
When Oticon, a company that manufactures and distributes hearing aids in the U.S., first met with Cisco Master Unified Communications Partner Alliant Technologies, their phone system left much to be desired. Some of the challenges included the system’s lack of scripting support and its inability to integrate with other applications.
In this video, we hear from Oticon IT Director Lars Anderson who talks about his experience with Alliant and the process of setting up the company’s entire Unified Communications and Contact Center.
What was it like working with Alliant and how can customers find partners in their area with the specialties they need? Keep reading… Read More »
From time to time we like to spotlight our partners and the services they provide. We met some great partners last month at Partner Summit 2012 and asked them to tell us a little bit about their company and the services they offer to partners and customers.
Watch this video to hear from Firefly, PT Multipolar, Providea, IBM, and Leverage Information Systems.
What else did we find out about our partners? Read More »
As I talk to customers, sometimes the quest for cloud seems a bit quixotic. You know where you want to get to, other folks say they have been there and have the t-shirts, but the path forward is not all that clear.
Its one of the reasons we launched the Cisco Cloud Partner Program (CPP)— so that Cisco’s cloud-savvy channel partners with expertise in areas like infrastructure, app management and cloud-related professional services can better engage with customers on their own personal cloud journey—think of them as cloud Sherpas.
Under the Cisco Cloud partner Program, channel partners are not only certified for their knowledge of Cisco technologies but also technologies from our broad ecosystem of technology partners to ensure they have a holistic perspective and well-rounded capabilities. Cisco just included CA Technologies as part of that effort and now channel partners with certified knowledge of CA Technologies Automation Suite will meet the Cloud Management competency certification under the Cisco Cloud Partner Program.
Cisco and CA have a solid track record of building solutions that benefit of our joint customers and that are easier to deploy for our mutual channel partners. For example, we have CA-certified stacks on Vblock and FlexPod, and tight integration between CA’s Automation and Infrastructure Management solutions and our Cisco UCS. This latest announcement regarding the CPP provides another benefit for our mutual channel partners and greater choice to our customers.
But the latest partner logo update brings a modern, streamlined look and feel and is in line with the Cisco brand. These new partner logos help partners more effectively represent, leverage, and extend the Cisco brand to their customers.
